Dead Mens Path summary

Michael Obi became the headmaster of a school called Ndume Central School.
He was very happy with his new job. He wanted to create a modern school
out of an old-fashioned one. With the help of his wife Nancy, he wanted to
show how a modern school should be run.

He had two aims for the new school: a high standard of teaching and a beautiful
schoolyard. Nancy planted flowers of many different colours that blossomed
when the rain set in.

One day, Obi saw an old woman walk right across the planted area in the
schoolyard. He walked up to the place and realized that there was an old road
there. He told one of his teachers who had worked at the school longer than him
about the episode. Obi was shocked that people just went right through the
schools property. The teacher said that the road was seldom used, but that it was
holy to the villagers. The villagers used the road when people were buried.

Obi did not like the villagers using the road right across the schoolyard. The
Government Education Officer was coming to inspect the school, and Obi
wanted to make a good impression.

To stop the villagers from using the road, Obi set up a big fence around the
school. Three days later the village priest contacted Obi. He told Obi to remove
the fence because the spirits of dead people departed by it and babies who were
born came through it. Obi told the priest that his job as a teacher was to destroy
old myths like that. He did not remove the fence.
Two days later a woman died in the village. An old spiritualist was contacted to
calm down the relatives who strongly disliked the fence. However, the next day
when Obi woke up and looked out, the beautiful garden was destroyed. The
hedges around the school were torn up and the flowers trampled down.

The same day, the Supervisor came on his inspection. He was not impressed. He
wrote a letter to the state where he described the tribal war between the school
and the village. He also wrote that this was a direct result of an enthusiastic new
headmaster.